If you make $7.00 an hour, working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, that comes out to be $14,560 a year. If you invest 4%, that comes out to $48.00 a month. If you do that for 50 years – this is assuming that you never get a raise - you’d have ~$1,253,000. That would give you ~$8,300 a month after you retire, and when you die, your family still has over a million dollars.
Social Security’s monthly benefit for the same individual (via their online calculator) is $664. However, they were taking 15% (7.5% from the individual and 7.5% from the employer) of his income; almost 4 times as much money. With Social Security, when you die, you leave nothing but Social Security’s wonderfully generous $255 death benefit (payable only once per family), and unless you were fortunate enough to die on the first day of the month, someone has to reimburse the government for your last $644 check (no prorating over the month, even if you died on the last day) in full.
The math is “..so simple even a caveman can do it.” Social (in)Security is a complete rip-off, and there can be no debate about it; facts are facts.
Social security costs you 4 times as much, and returns about 1/12th the money.